


Clytemnestra

by Shyaway



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-16
Updated: 2010-06-16
Packaged: 2017-10-10 03:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shyaway/pseuds/Shyaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's a difficult mistress, is the <i>Black Pearl</i>, as both Jack and Barbossa have reason to know ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clytemnestra

She was a difficult mistress, was the _Black Pearl_. Barbossa would not have tolerated such pride in any other vessel. The lot of ships, like women, was to do as they were told. But the _Pearl_ was different. When she fought against orders she did not like, he imagined what it would be like to tame her, break her. He relished the idea and teased out the reality of it the way he would wind the unkempt hair of a jade around his fingers before wrenching her head back with his fist to hear her hiss in pain. He did much the same with the _Black Pearl_.

Sometimes she was a panther as eager to tear into their prey as he was. Sometimes her prey was him. A rope uncoiled like a tripwire across the deck. A cannon jerked itself free of its restraints. The _Black Pearl_ desired widowhood. With her captain immortal, however, her attempts were futile. _Can't kill me, my lovely. And by the time this curse is lifted I reckon you'll have stopped trying._

Under Barbossa's command, Jack's gleaming courtesan with claws acquired the look of a hard-treated doxy, beaten by her master and just as quick as he to avenge a slight or enter the fray. Barbossa had always known she was a woman after his own black heart. Like him she hated to leave the carcass of a ship before its bones were picked clean. Like him she would dispose of a captain not to her liking. Oh, he loved remembering that night, especially now that memory was one of the few pleasures left to him, when bleeding and bruised Jack was thrown sprawling at Barbossa's feet. Slammed flat against the deck in a conjugal embrace that the _Pearl_ took indifferently. Jack loved that ship. He looked at her with the eyes of a wounded doe as Barbossa hauled him up and left the ship to drink down the spilled blood of her erstwhile captain.

He'd thought then that her whore's loyalty was his for the taking. But now, ten years on, he found that notion mocked. Sparrow was back. Barbossa noted with displeasure how the sails, the wheel, the very hull seemed to strain in welcome towards this odd bird who should be long dead. The _Black Pearl_, like fate, was a fickle bitch.


End file.
